Chapter 61: The Cost of a Heartbeat
The first thing I was aware of was the timer.
38:24:07… 06… 05… 04…
It burned in my vision, a constant, pulsing scar on reality. The numbers were a lifeline and a curse. They meant I was still alive. They also meant the clock was still ticking, and a whole lot of hell was still waiting for me.
Then the pain arrived. It wasn't a single sensation, but a chorus of agony. A deep, cold fire in my chest felt like something had scooped out a part of my soul and left a hollow, freezing cavity behind. Every muscle ached with a deep, bone-weary fatigue, and a sharp, stabbing pain flared in my ribs with every shallow breath I managed to drag in. I tried to move my hand and a white-hot spike shot up my arm from a wound I couldn't see.
The noise hit next. A low, constant din of suffering. Groans, whimpers, the ragged, wet sound of someone struggling to breathe. The clatter of pans, the hurried footsteps, and the low, tense voices of people trying to hold back chaos.
I forced my eyes open. The world was a blur of flickering torchlight and shadows. I was lying on a thin, scratchy cot, my body stiff and protesting. The air was thick and heavy, a suffocating cocktail of blood, sweat, vomit, and the cloying sweetness of strong healing salves. It was the smell of a place where people were trying very hard not to die.
I was in an infirmary. Or what passed for one. It was a large hall, maybe a repurposed guild mess or a warehouse, now crammed wall-to-wall with cots and pallets. Everywhere I looked, there were broken bodies. Soldiers with limbs wrapped in bloody bandages, adventurers with armor stripped away to reveal brutal gashes, civilians caught in the wrong place. A healer, a woman with a pinched, exhausted face, moved between the cots, her hands glowing with a faint green light as she passed them over a soldier's leg. The flesh seemed to knit together slowly, but the soldier still screamed through gritted teeth.
My mind, sluggish and battered, started putting the pieces together. I was here. Alive. The mission timer was at thirty-eight hours. The invasion had started with sixty-two hours on the clock. The System said it would last thirty hours.
Sixty-two minus thirty-eight is twenty-four. We were… six hours in? No. Wait.
I focused on the memory, pushing past the pain. The warning had appeared at exactly sixty-two hours remaining in the countdown. It said the engagement would last thirty hours. If I had thirty-eight hours left now… that meant…
Sixty-two minus thirty-eight is twenty-four. Twenty-four hours had passed since the start.
The attack had been going on for a full day, almost a full day. A full day had 32 hours here, not 24 hours.
And I had been unconscious for, about 18 hours… damn, almost the entire time? The last thing I clearly remembered was the cold. The unnatural, unraveling cold of Moti's magic or weapon or whatever it was, hitting my chest. The feel of Freya's armor against my face as we fell. Her voice calling me an idiot.
Freya.
If I was alive, that meant she was alive. The primary objective was still active. She had survived. A shaky, painful breath escaped me, part relief, part agony. I'd done it. I'd actually managed to not get her killed.
But the mission wasn't over. The timer proved that. The System said the attack would last thirty hours. Thirty hours from the start, at sixty-two hours on the clock, would leave me with thirty-two hours remaining.
I had thirty-eight.
My addled brain chewed on this. Thirty-eight was more than thirty-two. The math was wrong. The only way that made sense was if…
The attack was still not over.
The thirty-hour siege was not finished. The main event, the organized horde commanded by Moti, was done. The mission clock had moved on. We were in the final leg. The timer now was just… my life. The countdown to the System's next move, or my next mission, or my eventual execution. This was the time I had bought by surviving.
A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I closed my eyes against the throbbing in my skull. The noises of the infirmary pressed in again, louder now. A man two cots over was sobbing quietly. Someone else was calling for water in a weak, rasping voice.
I was surrounded by the cost. This was the price of the city's survival, and of my own. The pain in my chest was my personal receipt. I had traded my well-being for Freya's heartbeat, and by extension, my own. It had been a desperate, stupid, instinctual move. The kind of move the old me, the one from before this world, would never have made.
But as I lay there, drowning in the evidence of a day-long battle I had mostly slept through, a single, clear thought managed to surface through the pain and the noise.
We made it.
The relief was short-lived, crushed under the immediate, urgent need to move. Lying here was a luxury I couldn't afford. The timer was still ticking. Freya was out there. The battle might be in its final stages, but a stray arrow, a lone beast breaking through, it could all be over in a second.
Gritting my teeth, I tried to push myself up on my elbows. A wave of nausea and blinding pain, sharp and hot from my ribs, slammed me back down onto the thin cot. The impact sent a fresh jolt of agony through my chest, and I saw stars. My body was a prison of broken parts and screaming nerves.
No. Not happening.
With a grunt that tore at my throat, I rolled onto my side, ignoring the way the world spun. I fumbled with the front of my leather armor, my fingers clumsy and weak. The straps felt impossibly complex. Every shift of my torso was a fresh lesson in pain. Finally, my fingers closed around a familiar, cool glass vial tucked into an inner pocket. Thank every god in this shitty world, it hadn't shattered.
It was the last one. A rich, opaque yellow liquid that swirled with a faint, internal light. A high-grade healing potion which I'd assumed was ordinary till Freya told me otherwise. This qualified.
I popped the cork with my thumb, the sound unnaturally loud to my ringing ears. I didn't hesitate. I threw my head back and downed the entire vial in one swallow.
The taste was indescribable. Not bitter, but profoundly alien, like drinking liquid sunlight and ground-up bones. For a second, nothing happened.
Then the world exploded.
A magical aura of brilliant, rich yellow erupted from my skin, blinding me. It wasn't a gentle warmth; it was a forge fire ignited in my veins. My back arched off the cot as a scream was ripped from my lungs, a raw, animal sound of pure agony. This wasn't healing. This was being taken apart and put back together wrong.
I felt it. I felt my shattered ribs grind against each other, snapping back into place with a series of wet, internal cracks that echoed in my skull. The torn muscles in my arms and legs twisted and writhed like live snakes, knitting together with a searing, stitching pain. The cold, hollow void in my chest where the dark magic had hit was scoured away by this burning, golden light, a sensation like having my insides sandblasted.
The cot buckled beneath me and I crashed to the stone floor, my body convulsing. I was aware of people shouting, of footsteps running toward me, but it was all distant, muffled by the roaring inferno in my own flesh. I curled into a fetal position, my fists clenched so tight I felt my nails break the skin of my palms.
Just as suddenly as it began, the golden aura vanished.
The pain didn't leave, but it changed. The white-hot, world-ending agony receded, leaving behind a deep, throbbing, manageable ache. It was the difference between being actively dismembered and having survived a brutal beating. I lay on the cold stone, panting, sweat pouring off me, my entire body trembling with the aftershocks.
I could move.
Pushing myself up onto my hands and knees was a Herculean effort, but I did it. I then forced myself to stand, my legs shaking violently, my body screaming in protest. I leaned heavily against the wall, my vision swimming. I felt… about eighty percent. Still broken, still in incredible pain, but functional. I was a cracked pot hastily glued back together, but I could hold water.
Two healers, a man and a woman, skidded to a halt in front of me, their faces a mix of alarm and anger.
"What in the seven hells do you think you're doing?" the woman snapped, her hands already glowing with a soft green healing light. "Those combat-grade potions are not a hundred percent guaranteed! They force the body to heal faster than it should! You could have torn everything open again!"
"You need to lay down, right now," the man said, his voice firm. "The beast attack is still going on, but the adventurers and guards have things handled. You're in no condition…"
"I don't care," I rasped, my voice a ragged ruin. I pushed past them, my steps clumsy and unsteady, but steps nonetheless. I was a puppet with half its strings cut, but I was moving. "Where is she? Where's Freya?"
The healers exchanged a worried glance. The woman tried to block my path. "Sir, you need to think of your own…"
"WHERE IS FREYA?" I roared, the force of it tearing at my raw throat and making my newly-set ribs groan in protest.
The infirmary fell silent for a moment, all eyes on the half-dead man screaming a name. The male healer sighed in defeat, pointing a trembling finger towards the far end of the hall, where large double doors stood slightly ajar. "The north wall. They're… they're mopping up the last of them. But you shouldn't…"
I was already staggering forward, a man possessed, dragging my broken body towards the sound of a dying war.
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